CentOS-4 for x86_64 Official Release

The CentOS team is pleased to announce availability of CentOS 4.0 x86_64. This product supports AMD x86_64 and Intel EM64T processors, including all compatible platforms. Major new features include the Linux 2.6 Kernel, SELinux, udev replacing the /dev system, Xorg, MySQL4, CyrusIMAPD, Gnome 2.8 and KDE 3.3. These improvements along with many more are detailed in the release notes available online (http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/x86_64/RELEASE-NOTES-en.html).

We request you leave your torrent running (and if behind a firewall, with tcp ports 6881 - 6899 open ) as your client will become part of the peer to peer bittorrent network and reduce the load on our network mirrors. If you need some quick pointers for getting up to speed on bittorrent read http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=24

If you wish to use HTTP to download these files, please check with a mirror close to you, the files might take a few hours to propagate through the mirror network. MD5SUM's for the iso's are provided at the end of this announcement.

There are no known issues. The system installers have been tested extensively in house by the CentOS Developers and Testers. Known good install methods include CD-Rom, HTTP, FTP, PXE, NFS and local Hard Drive based.

All fixes and updates released by the upstream provider up to 28th Feb 2005 have been incorporated into the main package tree. Updates received since then, are available via 'yum update'.

The CentOS 4 RPM Signing Key is available from our master mirror network and can be imported as: rpm --import http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-centos4 (Note: this is a final release key, the CentOS 4 Beta and CentOS 4 rc1 key cannot be used to verify CentOS 4 packages.)

If you are presently running CentOS 4 Beta we recommend a "linux upgradeany" upgrade install using the CD Installation Set. If you are running CentOS 4 rc1, you can use the "yum upgrade" command to move your installation to CentOS 4.

To upgrade from CentOS 3.X or CentOS 2.1 please read this appendix:http://www.centos.org/docs/4/html/rhel-ig-x8664-multi-en-4/ap-upgrade.html~ If this upgrade method is not adequate please see this (pending) alternative CentOS 4.x upgrade techniques FAQ entry: http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=27

Due to the large number of changes in the core system of CentOS4, including the introduction of Udev and SELinux on a 2.6 Kernel, yum based update and upgrade options are not safe methods to upgrade from CentOS 3, and would cause unpredictable results.